Have you ever read anything in the Bible that made you question God or the Bible? In Genesis 22, we are told that God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” Wait, did God just tell Abraham to sacrifice his son? Doesn’t the Bible condemn child sacrifice? Didn’t God judge other nations for child sacrifice? Is this a contradiction, is this proof that the God in the Old Testament is different than the God in the New Testament? What is going on here? For starters, this is a prime example of why you shouldn’t take passages out of context because when you do they will seem to contradict the rest of the Bible as well as can be seen in this situation, to make God out to be something he is not.
In Luke 24:27 we are told that Jesus, after his resurrection, was walking with some of his followers and that he took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. So if Jesus said that the writings of Moses and the prophets were written about him then this should be our first clue into understanding this passage. We need to look at this passage through the lens of Jesus or more specifically through the lens of the Gospel.
So let’s go back to Genesis 22 and look at the whole story, starting in verse 1 we read, “Sometime later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.” So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together. When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the LORD will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
So in this story, we see that God does ask Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering. But the key here is that the request made by God is a test of Abraham’s faith, which Abraham passes and was stopped before he went through with the sacrifice. Another key point here is Abraham’s response to Isaac when asked where the sheep for the burnt offering was to which Abraham responded God will provide. You see Abraham knew, because God had told him, that Isaac was the promised son from whom God would bring forth a great nation, so in Abraham’s mind he seemed to believe that God would work out the details, whether that meant God would provide something else or raise his son from the dead. We are told elsewhere that Abraham was counted righteous because he believed God.
But we still have the issue of God asking someone to commit child sacrifice and is God a moral monster for even asking? If the writings of Moses, this passage included, and the prophets are about Jesus then how do we see the Gospel message in God asking someone to commit child sacrifice? First of all, we can read about Jesus asking something similar of each and every one of us. In Luke 14:26 Jesus says, “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.” And then elsewhere he goes on to add “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” God wasn’t demanding child sacrifice of Abraham, he was laying out what it means to follow and believe in him. We understand from the context of the passage that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son rather it was a call for Abraham to deny himself in order to follow God, the very same thing required of us. But also in this story, we see that God isn’t the moral monster we are the monsters because “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” God ultimately offered his son on Mount Calvary as a sacrifice to atone for our sins. So is God a moral monster? No, instead of us dying and paying the price for our sins which we deserve, Jesus the spotless sinless sacrificial lamb that God provided to take our place died, which ultimately makes us the moral monster and also at the same time the most loved in this story.
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